


Dusk

by themus



Category: The OC
Genre: Child Abuse, Drug Abuse, Explicit Language, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Pre-Series, Underage Drinking, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-06-23
Updated: 2007-06-23
Packaged: 2019-02-23 03:37:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13181550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themus/pseuds/themus
Summary: How did Ryan end up in the stolen car with Trey?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Brandywine's Playlist Challenge on Livejournal.
> 
> Inserted lyrics by Counting Crows.

 

 

_It’s getting cold in California  
I guess I’ll be leaving soon_

_\--_

 

 

I hit the cement with the full weight of my body, scraping the skin off the inside of my arms and the palms of my hands as I try to catch myself.

When I roll onto my back, shoulder hard up against the gutter grating, AJ is lurking by the mailbox. He points a finger at me, pores clogged with motor oil and nicotine.

“Get lost.”

I can hear the words slurring even through the ringing in my ear where he slapped me.

My head is pounding and I'm in no mood to get run off like a stray dog.

I lift myself up on my elbows, keep my face carefully blank, and wait for him to warn me again, make me choose between standing my ground or turning tail. Alternatively, as pissed as he is, I might not get a second warning.

Instead he just glares at me for a moment before heading back up the path to the dingy prefab single-story that I usually call home.

And that's in the loosest sense of the word.

I wait until he's in the house and the door slammed behind him before I mutter a convicted 'asshole' under my breath. I would say it to his face if I wanted to tangle with him again, but once is definitely enough for today. I'd rather leave while my hide is still mostly intact.

Heaving a sigh, I push myself to my feet and dust off my clothes. There's a new piece of chewing gum stuck to the bottom of my boot and the slimy pith of a banana peel has spread itself over the thigh of my jeans.

Wonderful.

Knowing AJ, he probably aimed me right for them when he propelled me off the sidewalk. Fucking jackass. I bet he was pissed off that there wasn't any dog shit around.

I finally notice the group of teenagers across the street who have been watching me – a couple of Hispanic guys whose faces are familiar, and, attached to their hips, two brown-eyed beauties who ought to be on a catwalk or the cover of a magazine.

One of the girls looks at me and laughs and I feel my face beginning to burn red. That's AJ – always finding new and interesting ways to humiliate me. I've given up count of the number of times he's hit me in front of his friends. Apparentlyheavyweight versus middleweight makes for a good match as far as his neanderthal acquaintances are concerned.

There are times that I just wish the earth would open up and swallow me whole. And this is definitely one of them.

I go back to methodically wiping off my clothes, refusing to retreat before I'm ready, and though I'm doing my best to ignore the presence of the group across the street, I still detect a couple of stifled giggles before I walk away.

Every day I find new things to hate about my life.

Fucking AJ and his superiority complex, and his cocaine, and his drinking. And my mom, letting him getting away with everything.

 

* * * *

 

_Daylight fading, come and waste another year  
All the anger and the eloquence are bleeding into fear_

_\--_

 

The light is fading by the time I get to Trey's, covered in sweat from walking ten blocks in the sticky summer heat. The tarmac is blistering even as the sky begins to turn a slate blue behind my brother's apartment building – a concrete slab hidden between the freeway on-ramp and a row of dilapidatedstores. 

I take a deep breath before I push the door open and endeavour to jog up the flight of stairs without taking another.

There's a drunk on the first landing, passed out, with a puddle of dried vomit on his already stained shirt. Unconsciously I speed up, taking three paces to reach the next landing and Trey's door. I have to breathe when I get to the top, and I catch the expected lungful of stale air - sharp with sweat, mellow with weed and spiced by cooking smells from five apartments.

I knock on Trey's door hard three times and then flop sideways against the door frame, letting my head make contact with the splintering green-painted wood.

After two minutes the door opens a crack, the rusted links of the security chain visible below the hazel eye that peeks through the gap.

I don't have the energy to form a greeting, so I remain static until the eye focuses on me, jerking out of view a moment later.

The door slams shut, I hear the click and shuffle of the chain being removed, and it comes open again, this time a shoulder-span as Trey wedges himself in the gap. He's bleary-eyed, hair mussy, wearing loose blue cargo pants and a blue wifebeater.

Trey's all about the co-ordination.

I remember a girl he dated once – a hot-blooded part-Italian – who used to cuss him out all the time over his choice of clothes. She lasted almost two months before, according to Trey, her pussy stopped making up for her mouth.

Trey rubs one eye with the palm of his hand. A smouldering joint is stuck between his fingers. He's stuffed too much grass into one end of the kingsize paper and it's bending inexorably toward the fraying carpet.

“What's up, LB?”

There was a time, back when I was six or so, that I liked to think the nickname stood for something cool. Pretty soon I realised that Little Brother and Little Bitch were interchangeable, depending on Trey's mood.

Sometimes it's difficult to decide which particular epithethe's referring to. Today, though, the steely glint in Trey's eyes gives it away. He's in a bad mood. Which makes me the bitch.

“I'm gonna need to hang out for a while, is that cool?”

Trey sniffs, puffing on his joint and looks me up and down once. I always underplay it, and he always knows it, but neither of us wants to sit down and discuss the truth.

“Come on in.”

He shoves the door wide with his elbow and spins on his heel, leaving me to follow.

The door has warped from a recent leak in the upstairs apartment and I have to use the toe of my boot to lever it upwards as I shove it back into the frame.

Trey is already back to lounging on the sofa when I turn round, his feet up on one of the arms and his head disappearing into the faded cushions.

I look around for a seat and eventually settle on the nearest armchair. There's a huge hole in the arm of it now, revealing the metal underneath, and most of the springs in the seat are buckled, piercing the worn fabric. Someone has tried to mitigate the situation by duct-taping a couple of flattened pillows to it.

Apart from doing nothing for the aesthetics, the pillows haven't resolved the problem either, I find, as something sharp threatens to pierce my leg when I sit. I tilt my foot up onto the toe, wedging my heel against the chair so that my leg isn't resting so heavily on the seat cushion.

It isn't as though we both can't fit on a three-seater sofa if Trey just sits up. But today I'm not going to ask him to move. Not when he's so on edge that I can feel it.

I sit there quietly, thinking that I sure as hell better not get tetanus from this visit.

“So what happened?” Trey asks. He's watching the smoke from his joint dissipating towards the ceiling, oblivious to my discomfort.

What happened? My father happened. Jake and AJ happened. My fucking life happened, that's what.

“AJ,” I tell him in the end, and for a moment I think that's all there really is to say. “He ran a competition between my head and the wall,” I add, as dryly as I can manage. “The wall won.”

“Motherfucker,” Trey responds. The consonants are rounded and smoothed by the effects of the marijuana. “When are you gonna get out of there, Ry?”

When my mother finds a guy who won't kill her as soon as I go, I answer in my head. Which means never.

“You and I both know she's gonna throw you out as soon as you turn eighteen. Or better yet, she'll get whatever asshole she's fucking to do it for her. Why don't you just leave now, save yourself three years of ass-kickings?”

“You _know_ why, Trey,” I respond. Frustration seeps into my tone, and I almost regret it but for the fact that it finally makes him look at me.

Trey, of all people, should understand why I can't leave. He's been there and done it. He's put himself in between our father's belt and me, just like I've put myself between AJ's fist and Mom. The difference is that when he got tired of it, he walked away. And I can't.

Sometimes I wish that I could.

But it hurts more to give up than it does to take the punches. So I stay and I take it, while Trey wastes his freedom selling pot and jacking cars and getting high all day trying to forget how much it hurts to give up.

I look away, not wanting Trey to see the accusation in my eyes. Or the envy.

Instead, I drop my head into my hands and close my eyes. The headache has spread around my skull. I know there must be bruises there, forming under the skin. There are scars, too, that no one will ever know about but me. “I'm so fucking tired of all this shit.”

I don't mean to say it out loud – to acknowledge the weight that has been settling down on me. It has become unbearable recently. I feel like a trapped animal, frenzied and desperate. I want to tear at the bars of my cage.

“So, like, I don't know how long you wanna stay, but I got some business I have to take care of later, so you might be on your own for a while.”

I nod my head without looking up. Anything's better than the prospect of standing outside that house, waiting to see if AJ is going to let me in or demand a rerun. Or maybe both.

“How pissed is Mom?” Trey asks. “Is she gonna come breaking down my door?”

I snort to myself, wondering what hat he pulled that idea out of. Mom hasn't shown up anywhere to drag me home since I was nine. “She was out cold,” I tell him, ”she doesn't even know I'm gone.”

She doesn't even know I'm gone.

_'Are your parents aware that you're out here?'_

I shake the cop's voice out of my head. It's over a year ago now since I got caught standing on that sidewalk watching Trey scout out cars. I've heard that same question in all its variations over a dozen times since then. And nothing has changed except that this time Mom will probably never even realise I was gone.

“Shit, you're depressing me,” Trey spits, suddenly.

I hear him moving and look up, shifting the memories. Trey always knows what I'm thinking, like he can see right past the expression on my face and into my head. I don't know how he does it, but he's the only person who's ever bothered to figure it out.

He takes a drag on the joint and then extends his arm, flipping it round between his fingers so that the roach end is facing me.

“Trey--”

“It can't hurt, can it?”

It can, I want to tell him. Because this shit – drugs and liquor – is why we're both sitting in this shitty apartment with nowhere else to go. But that's not what he means, so I don't say it. I just take the joint and put the soggy end in my mouth and inhale. Because he's right, it can't make it hurt any worse.

We pass the joint back and forth until it's done and Trey rolls another from the fixings that are lying on the coffee table.

By that time my head feels lighter and I'm calmer. It's like all the bad feelings have been wrapped up in thick blankets. They're not gone – they're just padded down for now, waiting to spring back up again, full force.

At some point Trey has switched the TV on to some flickering pirate copy of a movie that I don't care to recognise. He's watching it, eyes red-rimmed and glassy, but I can tell that he's not really taking it in.

I get up to get some water and when I come back – murky glass in hand – Trey's eyes are on me.

“How's your head?” he asks. And for a moment he's that concerned brother who used to hug me after nightmares and let me sleep in his bed; he's the brother that I idolised.

“Okay,” I tell him, “not so bad.”

“Coz I got some stuff, ya know, like aspirin, or whatever.” He flicks his hand toward the bathroom, laughing at himself. As if it's embarrassing somehow to have legal drugs in your bathroom cabinet.

I nod as I sit down again – on the sofa this time, now that there's space, where the cushions are markedly more comfortable. “Thanks,” I answer, “but I shouldn't. There's that Reye's syndrome thing. It's fine, anyway.”

Trey snorts and turns back to the TV, where Vin Diesel is doing his thing breaking out of some underground prison. “Whatever, bro, it's your headache.”

And just like that, the concern is gone and the edge is back.

I know better than to question it, so I stay quiet.

When the movie ends Trey stands up and throws the remote into my lap. “I gotta go take care of that business,” he says, typically curt and I think deliberately vague.

It's not like I don't know he's going to do something illegal. I'm just wondering whether it's drugs or cars or both while he grabs his denim jacket from the back of a chair and hooks it over his shoulder.

He doesn't say anything as he shuts the door hard behind him.

I flick through the TV channels for a while, but as usual there's nothing on that interests me, and it's too hot in the apartment to concentrate on the usual overrated prime-time specials.

I go to the bathroom and run the faucet, splashing cold water on my face and the back of my neck to wash off the sheen of sweat. The water drips down my throat and soaks into my white t-shirt.

I look around for a towel to wipe my face on, but the only specimen is lying rucked on the floor next to the shower. Mould is creeping across it – an army of little black dots, beginning where the material meets the crack in the tile. I use the back of my hand instead and clear the rest off with the bottom of my t-shirt. Then I look at myself in the mirror, checking to see if AJ has left any marks from our latest encounter.

My ear is a little red around the tip and there's a mysterious yellow bruise on my chin from the previous altercation, but that's it. I twist and try to check the back of my head by looking sideways into the mirror, but in the end I have to settle for running a hand through my hair. I can't feel blood, just a knot of angry tissue where I hit the wall, and that probably feels a lot bigger than it is.

I go back into the living room and flick through the TV channels again, finally turning it off and placing the remote back on the coffee table. I consider rolling myself a joint, but I'm not sure today if Trey will think that something to get pissed off about, and I don't really feel like getting kicked out of his apartment too, so I leave it.

Out of boredom I wander round the apartment: checking the few CDs on the shelf, though I've never really cared for music one way or another; and looking through the kitchen cabinets. There's nothing in there except for a few boxes of cereal and some tinned spaghettios. I'm not all that hungry, but I haven't eaten since breakfast, so I grab out a loaf of bread from the refrigerator and take the top two pieces.

I'm not too worried about Trey getting pissed about this – he tends to be much less possessive of food than he is of his drugs and his stack of Playboys.

I have to peel off the edges of the slices of bread where they've gone green before folding each one in half and consuming them in a couple of bites.

Then I continue my roaming. I end up in Trey's room, hoping for a vaguely entertaining book or a car magazine or something. There are clothes scattered all over the ragged carpet, and I start picking them up before I think about it, before I remember that this isn't our shared room back in Fresno any more. When I catch myself, I finish folding up the clothes that I've gathered and I notice that under a pair of discarded jeans is a pile of black leather, the hood of a grey sweatshirt peeking out from under a sleeve.

I put the jeans on the lone chair in the room with the other clothes I've folded and pick up the jacket. I thought I'd lost it, left it in my locker at school where the caretaker would find it and ditch it, or it would get placed in lost property and disappear. I don't remember wearing it the last time I came to Trey's, but here it is, the grey sweatshirt still tucked inside it, the sleeves pulled through.

The leather looks softer in the dark, shining smooth in the yellow light from the streetlamps outside.

I suddenly remember standing like this before, leather jacket in hand, staring out of the window of our bedroom, wondering when Trey was going to come home.

We had a heatwave that year, and maybe the clammy weather had shortened everyone's tempers, but I remember Trey getting into an all-out screaming match with Mom, the kind that shook the walls of the house. He finally screamed that he didn't need this fucking family any more and when he came into our room he packed up a bag and took off out the window. I realised at the last second that he didn't have his jacket but by the time I found it and held it out for him he was gone. He didn't come back for three weeks.

The flash of a car's headlights illuminates the room for a moment before it sweeps past on the street below. It knocks me out of my reverie and I feel like a trespasser all of a sudden; going places I shouldn't go, remembering things I shouldn't remember. I go back into the living room, shutting Trey's door carefully, and sit down on the sofa again, laying the jacket on the arm next to me.

I sit and think about those three weeks without Trey – three weeks that seemed like a lifetime to a frightened ten-year-old kid.

 


	2. Chapter 2

* * * *

__ I want to say goodbye to you  
Goodbye to all my friends  
Goodbye to everyone I know

_\--_

 

I'm still thinking about it when Trey comes back, casting a nervous look up and down the hallway outside before he shuts the door behind himself.

He shuffles to an awkward stop when he sees me.

He forgot I was here. Or he expected me to be gone.

He puts his hands to the small of his back and pulls at the hem of his wifebeater. Then he rubs a palm down the thigh of his pants. Once. Twice.

“What's that?” he asks, pointing at the jacket.

“My sweatshirt and jacket. I found them on the floor. Thought I'd lost them.”

“Huh,” Trey shrugs a disinterested shoulder and drops into the armchair.

I shouldn't ask, not when he's this jittery, but it's on my mind and I can't get rid of it. “Trey?”

“What?” His leg is bouncing up and down on the floor and he's chewing at his bottom lip.

He's high on something, and it isn't pot. Speed, most likely. A taster from whoever he saw tonight? A reward? Or something to steady his nerves.

I lose my nerve. It can wait. It's been waiting for five years.

“Never mind,” I whisper, shaking my head.

He smiles, but his features are tight. He's angry. “Never mind what?”

“I was just gonna ask a stupid question, it doesn't matter.”

“As if you've ever asked a stupid question in your life, LB. Go on, fire away.”

I start to dismiss it again, but when Trey's face begins to harden I stop. I look down, trying to get my bearings in the conversation, scraping at a burnt patch on the sofa with my fingernail.

“You remember when you were fourteen and you took off for three weeks?” I ask. I glance over at him and he's nodding – head shaking up and down like one of those wobbly-headed toys you get for the dashboard of your car. It's not a response to the question though, but the rush from whatever he's taken. “Where did you go?”

Trey laughs, wetting his bottom lip with his tongue. “That's what you wanted to know? Where I took off to when I was fourteen? I took off a lot of places, Ry, you expect me to remember all of them?”

“You don't just forget three weeks of your life, Trey. Where did you go?”

Trey shakes his head, still laughing. “I swear, Ry, you are the weirdest kid I know. You come out with the strangest shit sometimes. Where the hell did you think I went?”

I shrug, refusing to feel stupid and eventually Trey's derision fades, if not his anger.

“I stayed in Chino,” he says, spitting the accusation against himself, “I went from party to party; I crashed on a few couches. That's it. And then I ran out of money for drugs, and all my friends went home or got sick of me, and I was out on my ass, and I figured – fuck it, ya know? If I gotta worry about getting shanked while I'm asleep I might as well be at home.”

I keep my head down so that he doesn't see the surprise on my face. I'd always assumed that Trey had gone somewhere, done something – tried to make it on his own. I'd imagined him building a life wherever he was and maybe, just maybe, giving it all up so that he could come back to me. But it turns out he never left. It strikes me hard and I can't even figure out why. Why the hell would it matter where Trey did or didn't go for those three weeks? He was a kid then, younger than I am now. What does it even matter?

But it does matter. It matters that he left me for three weeks to get laid and get stoned. It matters that he didn't even try to get out of Chino. It matters that he'd already given up.

It matters because I think I'm giving up too.

“There's a party up on Grand tonight,” Trey says, “you wanna come?” He wipes the side of his index finger along his lip. His stare is intensely focused, too focused for Trey. There's something wrong in the sharpness of his gaze. “Well? Coz you can crash here if you want but I'm still going, man.”

I think about drinking and forgetting and finding a hot little piece of ass who will take my mind off of everything for the night. “Sure.”

Trey grins, in that tight-jawed way that he has even when he's not tense. “Great.”

Although it's unbearably sticky outside I pull on the hoodie and leather jacket, reasoning that if the party goes well I might not be coming back and I don't want to be carrying them round all evening.

Trey has his sleeveless denim jacket on again and his biceps are already glistening with sweat by the time we're halfway down the block. There's a slight breeze that ruffles my hair at the nape of my neck, cooling my skin.

We fall into stride, Trey and I, in the casual, measured lope that comes easy to both of us. I shove my hands in my pockets and watch Trey's twitch out of the corner of my eye.

Trey was never one for being still, even without chemicals being involved.

“So, hey, bro, I heard about Theresa and Eddie. Sorry, man.” His voice is light and sincere. The tension and the edge are gone, as if the breeze brushed them away.

I wince, because the idea of those two together still stings a little. “Yeah.”

“You were into her, huh?”

“Yeah.”

There's a mischievous pause and I can't help but smile, knowing what he's going to say next.

“So did you bang her?”

“Trey--” I protest, but I'm grinning too much to pull off the stern tone. “I'm not telling you that.”

I look at him and he wiggles his eyebrows at me.

“I'm not telling you that,” I repeat, making an effort to straighten my face.

“So that means you did,” he says.

I lower my head and attempt to school my features. “We shouldn't talk about this.” I really hope that he doesn't get onto the performance part.

“Aw, my little brother, all grown up.” Trey slings his arm over my shoulders and pulls me to him, reaching his hand up to rub at my head affectionately. “Sometimes I still think you're seven years old and riding round on that stupid pink BMX with all the bent spokes.”

“It wasn't pink – it was cherry red.”

“Yeah you just keep telling yourself that, Ry.”

I swipe him off but he's still grinning at me when I run my fingers through my hair, trying to make it presentable again. “And the spokes weren't bent until you borrowed it and left it out in the middle of the street.”

Trey chuckles, casting me a sideways look. “Yeah, and mom ran over it with the car coz she was so drunk.”

“She slapped the hell out of me for that,” I remember. I'm watching the sidewalk and I nearly miss Trey's sigh.

“You never deserved all that shit. Me, I was a fuck-up from the day I was born. But you were always the good kid.”

“Trey, don't start that shit,” I tell him, keeping my voice quiet to prevent the argument that could easily happen.

I see him shake his head but he doesn't speak again, even though I know he's still thinking it.

I'm not a little kid any more. I'm not still dumb enough to think that our family is normal, that it was our fault that our father couldn't keep his hands to himself, that his rage was our responsibility. Maybe I was always the good kid, but it was only because I wasn't as strong as Trey was, and I found it easier to submit than to stand up for myself. I still do, sometimes, when AJ is tweaked on meth and drinking on top of it, and just being in the same house as him scares the hell out of me.

But Trey never deserved any of that shit either: forced to become the man of the family at ten years old; to take the hits for me and mom together; to look after everything when no one cared enough to look after him. He didn't deserve to lose his entire childhood just so that I could still have some of mine.

“One day I'm gonna get you outta here, Ry,” Trey says, so softly that I almost miss it.

“How are you gonna do that, Trey?” I ask, weary of this situation, of his guilt and mine, tightly entwined. Chino is a pit I've fallen into that has no way out. Why get my hopes up about escape? “How?” I demand again. “You can't even get _yourself_  out of here.”

“Hey, I promised, didn't I? And this one I'm gonna keep. Just wait.” His voice is determined, but the light is wavering in his eyes when he looks at me, and I'm not sure that Trey even really believes it himself.

I don't have the will to argue about what he thinks his plan is, about how I can't leave Mom, about how if I leave she'll have to call me in missing eventually. About how that promise was made years ago, when we were both still children in so many ways, when we still thought that dreams were worth having.

It took a long time to sink in, but we both know better now. And some stupid fantasy about buying a Camaro and driving off into the sunset isn't going to get me through a Friday night at home when AJ wants to warm up his fists on my face.

The mood has turned morose and we walk in silence, the memories stretching out like shadows behind us, catching at our heels.

I watch the tail-lights of the cars that pass, trying to guess the make by their silhouettes and the sounds of the engines. It's a game we used to play as kids, when Mom wanted some privacy with whatever man was in the house. She used to send us out in the dark and Trey would walk between me and the street, balancing on the very edge of the kerb – one foot in front of the other, arms out like a tightrope walker – calling out the names of the cars that passed. I was in awe of him.

Trey clears his throat suddenly, making me startle a little. “So, uh, on a scale of one to ten, of all the lays you've ever had--”

I laugh, the mood snapped. “There's no way in hell I'm answering that,” I tell him, as he punches me in the arm.

 

* * * *

 

_Daylight fading, come and waste another year  
All the anger and the eloquence are bleeding into fear_

_\--_

 

As soon as we turn into Grand Avenue it's obvious which house we're headed for. There are groups of kids out on the front lawn, brazenly smoking joints and with bottles of liquor hanging from their hands. The windows and doors are all open, letting some repetitive club music blast out into the neighbourhood. From the state of the party-goers, it has obviously been running for some time. 

As is usual, Trey abandons me as soon as we get in the door. I see him approaching a leggy brunette in a mini-skirt to whisper in her ear and resign myself to not seeing my brother for a while.

First things first. I search out the kitchen and the source of the beer bottles, the empties of which are cluttering every available surface. I'm not exactly fond of large gatherings, so it helps to be a little buzzed, and any noticeable effects from the pot I smoked over an hour ago have long since vanished.

I grab myself a couple of Coronas and jostle my way through the crowded rooms. Most of the people here are at least ten years older than I am, and though some of the girls are painfully beautiful none of them catch my interest – all either taken or so clearly out of my league that it's not worth the effort it'll take to get turned down.

When a vicious headache starts forming from the combined effects of my mild concussion, the heat and the unbearably loud music, I head out onto the back porch, looking for a relatively quiet spot. I'm sure the beer isn't helping matters, but I'm not willing to give that part up.

I light a cigarette, finding a place in the shadows at one end of the porch and perching myself up on the wooden balustrade.

It's not so stifling here, without the press of bodies.

I idly watch a group of twenty-somethings wandering up the dark yard toward the back door. The door opens as they come up the steps, flooding the area with light and I squint in the sudden brightness that falls on me.

“Hey. Atwood, right?”

The door bangs shut again and I look up. There's a guy on the steps, staring right at me.

I take a long, deliberate pull from my beer as I try to think where I could possibly know him from. He's a six-foot African-American with huge, rippling muscles prominent under his t-shirt. He doesn't look familiar in the least. Maybe I got in a fight with his brother at school. Or hit on his sister at a party like this?

I finally swallow the beer and lower the bottle, still none the wiser. I sincerely hope that he doesn't want to kick my ass because if he does I'm going down. And I'm not getting back up.

“Do I know you?” I ask, determined to play it cool.

He laughs. “Guess not. But I know you. And we have a mutual acquaintance. Big motherfucker name of AJ.”

_Fuck_ .

I resist the urge to stand up, making my escape easier. Instead I shift my weight slightly, pushing the toe of my left foot harder against the ground. Hopefully I can get enough leverage to be over the balustrade and halfway across the yard before he can grab me.

“Look,” I tell him, “whatever that asshole's into you for, I haven't got anything to do with it.”

I tense and wait for the threats. This isn't exactly the first time an unsatisfied business partner has taken their frustration with AJ out on me.

But the guy just laughs again. “He ain't into me for nothing, Atwood. But you can give him a message next time you see him. Tell him everyone enjoyed his supplies, and he's got my business for the next party.”

Supplies? There's only one thing I've ever known AJ to sell and I can't see him branching out into party hats and streamers.

“Sure thing,” I mutter, dropping my half-smoked cigarette into my half-drunk beer. Suddenly my appetite for drugs of any kind has disappeared. I leave the beer on a nearby windowsill and go back into the house.

I'm going to find Trey and get him to give me the keys to his apartment before I leave. Because there's no way in hell I'm staying at a party catered by AJ of all people.

I hope that Trey is busy mingling in one of the busy downstairs rooms, and not upstairs in a bedroom with a girl. There are things that I have to draw the line at, and trying to get Trey's keys from him while he's having sex with some nameless chick is definitely one of them.

I circle the ground floor of the house three times before I catch sight of the brunette that I saw Trey talking to earlier. She's currently lip-locking a guy with a patchy goatee, and they clearly don't want to be disturbed.

For a moment I weigh up the possibility of sleeping on a park bench or going back to the house with whatever goatee guy might do to me for interrupting. It doesn't take long to decide that it's well worth the risk.

The music in the room is much too loud for any effort to be polite so I just tap the girl on the shoulder, taking a wary step back in case of a violent reaction.

What I get is a hand flapped vaguely in my direction, with no let-up on the tongue action. I wait for a second, until goatee guy puts his hands on the brunette's waist and starts sliding them upwards, taking the halter-neck she's wearing with them.

I tap the girl on the shoulder again, hoping that she'll give it up before the liaison gets x-rated. Thankfully it works this time, and she grabs goatee guy's hands to stop their progress before turning a very displeased glare in my direction.

“Sorry,” I say, though I'm not at all. “I'm looking for my brother – I saw you talking to him earlier.”

“Your brother?” she repeats, her eyes slipping in and out of focus.

“Trey Atwood.”

“Trey, sure. He was looking for Keiran. They're probably still in the back room, doing business.”

Business. I should have known. My anger is totally irrational – there's no reason why I should hate that Trey came to the party to sell drugs rather than take them, but I do. I hate that Trey deals drugs. I hate that my brother would be a part of the thing that makes my life a misery, be a part of the shit that AJ brings into the house. And it pisses me off that Trey would drag me along for it.

“Thanks,” I say, but I've already lost her attention, and goatee guy is getting on where he left off.


	3. Chapter 3

 

* * * *

 

 _Moonlight creeping around the corners of our lawn_  
When we see the early signs that daylight’s fading  
We leave just before it’s gone 

_\--_

 

It turns out that I have to go through the garage to get to the back room.

The door is already wide open, light from the single bare bulb streaming out onto the concrete slope of the driveway.

There's a car up on blocks inside - a metallic blue Dodge Viper - with the hood propped open to reveal the massive eight-litre engine.

It's a long minute before I can tear myself away from it, feeling the familiar pang that grips me whenever I get to see any of the cars 'Turo regularly moves – as if there's some chance of freedom, some insignificant little dream, which has been snatched from me.

I indulge myself by letting my fingertips smooth the gleaming paint as I stride the length of the car to the door at the back of the garage, lingering momentarily on the rise of the trunk. Then I'm squeezing between the cluttered work surface and the tool chest to trot up the short set of steps to the door.

My knocking cuts off the muffled voices inside for a minute. When the door is yanked open, it's by a crew-cut blonde guy who tops me by a foot.

“Who the hell are you?” he spits, looking me up and down.

“I'm looking for Trey,” I reply, unconsciously moving my hands from my side into a nonthreatening position.

“Fine. We're done anyway.” He moves back from the door and I catch a glimpse of Trey, standing at the far end of the room by a boarded-up window. He's pacing a little back and forth, which is an undeniable show of anxiety coming from my brother. And suddenly I get a bad, bad feeling about this whole thing.

“What the hell do you mean, finished?” Trey demands, glaring at the crew-cut guy. He's still shifting his weight, almost frantic. “We had a deal.”

By virtue of the fact that there's no one else in the tiny room, I guess that the blonde guy is Keiran, and that whatever business it was that Trey wanted to do with him is rapidly going sour.

A bad, _bad_ feeling.

Keiran crosses to a metal shelving unit at the back of the room and pulls something off of it from between used tins of paint. “I said we're finished, Atwood, and I've got work to do,” he says, turning and levelling a socket wrench at Trey. “So get the hell out, before I have to get my boys to _make_ you leave.”

“Trey,” I murmur, trying to broadcast my intense desire to go purely through tone.

He looks round at me, eyebrows arching up in surprise as if he somehow didn't know I was here. But he looks so high I'd be surprised if he knows up from down right now. Whatever it was that Trey took before his last meeting, I'm pretty sure he gave himself another hit before this one. The cumulative affects have him agitated enough to bounce off the walls.

“Let's just go, man,” I say, while I still have eye contact.

But Trey just shakes his head wordlessly. I can see him switching me off as he looks back at Keiran, setting a frighteningly intent look on the guy. “You fucking owe me money, K, and I ain't leaving till I get it.”

“I don't owe you shit,” Keiran yells.

I jump a bit at the sudden volume and have to grab at the doorframe to steady myself when I almost trip back down the steps. I really, really want to get the hell out of here now. “Trey--”

But Trey is pacing across the unvarnished floorboards, closing the distance between himself and Keiran, and the anger is tingling in the air now.

“I gave you a G's worth last month. You told me you'd cover it when you got paid.”

“That shit was fucking worthless. I ain't giving you a dime for it, and I ain't buying any more. Now get the hell out.”

I'm expecting Trey to throw a punch, so when he steps back I let a breath out in relief. But the next second he has a gun in his hands and I feel the world spin.

Trey has a gun. Trey has a fucking _gun_.

“Give me my fucking money, asshole!”

Where the hell did Trey get a fucking gun?

“Put the pea-shooter away,” Keiran snaps, “and get the hell out.” The guy's not even ruffled by the fact that Trey's pointing a gun right in his face. I'm about to be sick, because Trey is so wired I'm not sure that he won't pull the trigger. And then he'll be a murderer, and I'll be one too by the simple fact that I'm standing here.

And I don't even want to think about what that might mean.

And I definitely don't want to think about what will happen to that guy's face if a bullet goes through it at that close range.

Trey steps forward again, pressing the black barrel against Keiran's forehead until the skin pinches around it. Keiran doesn't budge, but he's grinding his teeth, pissed off.

I snap out my daze into barely controlled panic. “Trey, what the hell are you doing?” I demand, my voice shaking where I'm trying to keep from screaming at him. “Put the fucking gun away and let's just go!”

He doesn't even in glance in my direction. And my stomach flip-flops when I finally place the expression he's wearing. He looks like Dad always did when he was about to hand out a punishment.

I take a step towards him and the next thing I know I'm on the ground, face stinging from the impact.

I struggle, trying to wriggle out from the weight on my back, but I'm pinned and it's getting hard to breathe.

Trey's still yelling but I can't hear what he's saying past the pounding in my head as my lungs turn to fire. I'm aware of a growing pain in the small of my back and I wrench my elbow round as far is it will go, feeling a minor victory when the bone makes contact with something soft. I hit it again.

“Get off me, asshole,” I manage to gasp out with the little oxygen I have left. I have to grit my teeth when the weight shifts forward, shooting pain through my ribs. My ears are buzzing and my vision is starting to flash like a cheap disco light.

The weight disappears suddenly and I stagger up, drawing in frantic breaths until my vision sharpens and I can make out the room again.

“Don't just stand there, Ryan, get the fuck out the door.”

That's Trey. From behind me.

How the hell did Trey get behind me?

I brace my hand on the wall and edge backwards, tripping over someone's legs as I go and almost landing myself back on the floor again. I bump into Trey and he moves his arm in front of me, jabbing me back with an elbow in the chest. He's got a tire iron gripped hard in one hand, but he's still got the gun straight out in front of him, wrenching it back forth between Keiran and one of his 'guys', who's inching along the wall towards us.

Trey jerks the barrel of the gun at him and he pauses in his movement.

I look down and find the legs I tripped over, following the checkered shirt right up to the bloody head.

“Shit, Trey,” I breathe. I can't see the guy's face for all the blood. I've had my fair share of experience with scalp wounds, which always sting like a bitch and bleed like nothing else, but this looks bad even to me.

“Ryan! Get the fuck out the door!”

I stumble as Trey nudges me again, and sense comes slamming back. I back up into the garage, half-turning to see how many of the party-goers have noticed what's going on. Some are staring this way with bored fascination, but it doesn't look like any of them want to join in or call the cops. A small enough mercy when I'm going to be looking over my shoulder for months now, waiting for Keiran or the guy with the cracked head wanting payback.

This night just keeps getting better and better.

“You follow us, I'll fucking kill you, got it?”

Trey is holding the tire iron down by his side and the gun is lowering by inches as he trots backwards through the garage. He's breathing almost as heavily as I am but there's a glint in his eyes and I know he's getting off on the surge of adrenaline.

When we get to the garage door he spins and takes off at a run, and I follow him, glancing back as I count the hollow thudding of our feet on the warm sidewalk. We run until my lungs are burning again, until we reach the end of the street and turn the corner, boots slipping from the momentum.

“What the hell was that all about?” I ask, between gasping breaths. I can't keep from looking behind me every few paces, expecting to see the blonde or one of his friends bearing up fast. But there's nothing but empty air every time.

“Fucking prick,” is all Trey says. I notice his lip is starting to swell and I wonder how many hits he took before he could fight his way out and get the guy off me. He slows long enough to shove the gun back in the waistband of his jeans, the barrel resting against his spine. Then he's off again at a jog, jaw clenched and determined.

“Where are we going?” I ask, after a few minutes of Trey's concentrated silence.

“This ain't twenty questions, bro,” Trey snarls, “I have shit to take care of tonight and you just fucked it up.” He spins around and spreads his arms, the tire iron still resolutely clutched in his left hand. “You know better than to interrupt my business.”

I have to laugh at that, biting back the urge to ask if he's taking contracts now. “Come on, Trey, all I interrupted was an argument.”

“You know better,” Trey repeats. “You could've got yourself hurt. And I ain't got the time to babysit your ass.”

 _Could_ have got hurt? My lower back is burning and I'm sure when I get the chance to look I'll find a nice spread of bruises over my kidneys. But a little bruising is just par for the course in the Atwood family. I _could_ have left the party to find the garage cordoned off by police tape. I _could_ have heard all about it on the news a couple of days from now. I could have been visiting my brother in prison for the rest of my life. Or his grave.

I shoot him a glare, letting him read all of that in my eyes, because I don't have the energy to say it out loud, to express my fear that one day he's going to go too far, and that the penalty will be too steep.

It's a conversation we've been avoiding for years now, along with anything else that matters in our lives.

“Oh, so you're a big man now?” Trey taunts, interpreting my look, his lips twisting into a sneer, “you can take care of yourself?”

“I have been, haven't I?” I snap back, unthinking.

It's been two years now since Trey left – taking off from the hospital at New Year's, dropping by once in the middle of the night to shovel his clothes in a bag and hop out of the window again – and I had to grow up damn quick after he left.

“Man, I saw your face,” Trey contradicts as he steps forward, jutting his chin defiantly, “you were shitting yourself. And then when I had to get you out you were a little pussy. I might not have been able to tell you three times, Ryan. They might have killed us after one. So stop being a little bitch. You know better,” Trey repeats, drawing the words out, “than to interrupt my business.”

I shake my head, because his entire argument is groundless. It's not like I haven't seen guns before, or had them pointed at me, even. I've just never seen Trey point one at somebody and look so fucking sure that he's gonna pull the trigger.

“Fuck you, Trey.” I spit the words across my shoulder, hands stuffed deep into my jacket pockets, even though it's stifling with the thick material pulled tight over my shoulders. “Just give me your fucking keys,” I snap. I have no desire to get mixed up in any more of Trey's shit tonight.

I wonder what happened to the simple days when I could just turn up at the apartment and crash on his sofa – without 'business' and arguments and the bitter, insipid anger which shadows him. Soon there will be nothing left of my brother; only rage, and hopelessness and the ghost of the man he will never have the chance to be.

Trey's eyes are flashing, pupils impossibly wide. “Fuck you, Ryan, you're the one who busted in on my deal. You come with me or you go home to AJ. Whatever.”

He turns and starts across the street, leaving me alone on the sidewalk. I stare at the dingy front of a grocery store which is siphoning its light out into an empty parking lot. It has a police notice tacked up on dusty window, asking for witnesses to a robbery.

I contemplate going home, but even as I do I know there's no way it's happening. It's a Thursday and AJ's running out of booze, anticipating tomorrow's buy-in, using up the last of this week's coke . . . If I go back in that house I'll wake up in hospital. And even if Trey's pissing me off tonight at least he acknowledges my existence.

I'm tired of spending my life as a shadow.

“What the hell are you gonna do, Trey?” I yell after him. I scramble into a jog, trying to catch up as he crosses the parking lot on the diagonal.

I don't know why I'm asking. Because I don't want to know. Nothing good has ever happened when Trey's had that expression on his face.

Trey spins, taking small steps backwards as I move towards him, feet beating the blacktop.

I feel like a puppet, and everyone's fighting over the strings. Trey, Mom, AJ, Theresa. Every now and again I have to tug back, pretend that I have some sort of control. “What are you gonna do?”

I know that I should just turn around and walk away.

But he's my brother.

Trey shrugs, and the grin he gives me is sardonic. “I'm doing what I promised, LB,” he sing-songs, flopping his head to one side and shifting his grip on the tire iron. “I'm getting us outta here."


End file.
